WWYD: telecommunications outage/emergency

[bae]

Here's the scenario. It just happened to my county, it is still ongoing, and I'll be writing it up soon once the dust settles, but I want to pose it to y'all as a what-if first:

Imagine you live in a county that is in the Pacific Northwest. It is entirely made up of hundreds of small islands, offshore 10-20 miles from the mainland. (San Juan County, WA.). Four of the islands have ferry service from the mainland, and most of the population of the county is on those islands, with dozens of the smaller islands having populations of several-to-hundreds of people. Total population of the county is ~15,000 people, most of whom claim to be "rugged and self-sufficient". There are also probably this time of year 3-5k tourists roaming around.

Imagine that an undersea fiber optic cable fails. And this failure unexpectedly takes down phone service between islands (though calls work between numbers on the same island, on some islands), phone service to/from the mainland, 911 service, all dedicated T1/T3 lines, internet service, and cell service. All you can do, if you are lucky, is call someone on your own island.

ATM machines down. Pharmacies can't refill prescriptions from off-island doctors. AWOS weather reporting stations at the local airfields down. Banking transactions - down. Medic-alert systems - down. Grocery store orders - won't go through. People whose jobs or businesses require interacting with people outside the county are unable to work or serve their customers. Families can't talk to family members on other islands, or on the mainland.

The three major-ish islands have fire stations and fire/rescue organizations. The county seat, county government, and county emergency management center, is on an island with a population of about 5000 people. The county's emergency management director, one of two employees in this area, is in Colorado helping *them* out with their problems. There are no local TV/radio stations. There is an active, organized, practiced, and small ham radio organization.

You have a large percentage of elderly people in remote locations, who may have medical needs.

Day One: estimates of time-to-repair range from 48 hours to "many weeks", and the point of failure and likely fixes have not been identified yet. Telcom company official lets slip that a replacement cable may not exist on the planet and would have to be manufactured, which is OK, as the necessary equipment to do the repair either has to be fabricated, or brought in from Sweden, if indeed that equipment can be found...

Begin....

[creaker]

This is where you pull out the contingency plan. And if there isn't one you're either stuck with whatever rabbits someone can pull out of their hat on the fly - or just making do until it's fixed.

Does not help now - but any major single point of failure that can't be eliminated should have a contingency plan.

I hope it gets corrected quickly. Until then pulling together whatever communication services that work for emergencies I would think would be the highest priority.

[24prins]

Our town's emergency plan has one central location (the community center) for people who can't stay in their homes or have no one with whom they can stay, with police and EMTs standing by. A large chunk of the town is in a flood zone, so it's not unusual for some people to have to go to the community center on occasion. If it looks like the emergency will last more than a few hours, the county has a larger, stocked evacuation center (the community center has nothing but bathrooms and an unstocked kitchen). Any emergency lasting more than a few hours should result in the sick, elderly and others with special circumstances evacuating to an emergency center that can handle their needs. Our police patrol the town nonstop during flood emergencies and move people out of the flood zones right up until the waters make it impossible to pass. We've never had someone refuse to leave, but we've had to get the cherrypicker out to get people from the second floor of the Town Hall. Those good folks didn't want to leave during the emergency, and the waters rose faster than predicted.

Do you have a registry for people with special needs? That would be high on my list, so if there were an emergency the responders would know which people/places to check on first.

[Miss Cellane]

Oh. Wow.

I take it there was no back-up plan in place? No other form of communication they could rush to the islands, like more ham radios or some other kind of communication devices? To at least let police and fire communicate with the rest of the world?

When I was living in Boston, the main water pipe that brings water to Boston and about 30 other cities/towns. It was a ten-foot wide pipe. Ordinarily, getting a replacement pipe would have taken months. Luckily for everyone, the entire pipe system was being replaced, and the replacement pipe was already there.

But during the two or three days it took to put the new pipe in place, a back-up plan was used to keep the water flowing. Can you imagine the city of Boston without working toilets for two days?

We had to boil the water, as there was some concern about one of the water sources. (And let's face it, most people just went out and bought water. I think I might have been the only person to actually boil water during the crisis, having forgotten completely about the 3 gallons of water I keep around for emergencies.) It turned out that the boil order wasn't needed, but the authorities erred on the side of caution. The chief problem turned out to be that people were inconvenienced because restaurants and coffee shops couldn't make coffee, as the coffee machines don't heat water to boiling.

But the main thing is that the water kept flowing. I can't imagine a major utility not having a better back-up plan than, "Well, we can get another cable made in Sweden, and get things back to normal in a few months."

What were they thinking?

It's a good thing that people had the ham radios. I know a few ham radio operators, and they have stories about helping out in emergencies.

[ToomuchStuff]

Thought you already wrote up about this and what you all were doing (including pulling some help from retired folk)?


Here's the scenario. It just happened to my county, it is still ongoing, and I'll be writing it up soon once the dust settles, but I want to pose it to y'all as a what-if first:

Imagine you live in a county that is in the Pacific Northwest. It is entirely made up of hundreds of small islands, offshore 10-20 miles from the mainland. (San Juan County, WA.). Four of the islands have ferry service from the mainland, and most of the population of the county is on those islands, with dozens of the smaller islands having populations of several-to-hundreds of people. Total population of the county is ~15,000 people, most of whom claim to be "rugged and self-sufficient". There are also probably this time of year 3-5k tourists roaming around.

Rugged and self sufficient to me, in part means the they have boats to get others to the mainland as needed.
Imagine that an undersea fiber optic cable fails. And this failure unexpectedly takes down phone service between islands (though calls work between numbers on the same island, on some islands), phone service to/from the mainland, 911 service, all dedicated T1/T3 lines, internet service, and cell service. All you can do, if you are lucky, is call someone on your own island.

Fiber optic cables don't typically fail on themselves. I thought I read this was cut by somebody, which means an insurance/liability claim that should cover the expedition of repair. (limits future liability)
1. ATM machines down. 2.Pharmacies can't refill prescriptions from off-island doctors.3. AWOS weather reporting stations at the local airfields down.4, Banking transactions - down.5. Medic-alert systems - down.6. Grocery store orders - won't go through. People whose jobs or businesses require interacting with people outside the county are unable to work or serve their customers. Families can't talk to family members on other islands, or on the mainland.
1 Cry me a river. People need to learn to have emergency cash. Otherwise, long term good standing customers, tend to be able to do some kind of an IOU/honesty system.
2 Have to go to the island where the Doctor is, or use the local hospital, which I would guess would be staffed by a hammer. (hey there is an emergency ham setup, for the space station that was brought online a couple of years ago, when a computer problem caused communications issues) What about CB (anyone still use that? Not as long of range but still helpful.
3 I had to look that up, as the local weather service, is manned, and ham operators. Since it is operated by the FAA, I would expect some weather balloons (different setup) as well as information from AWAX (not sure of spelling)
4 Not sure I understand this! Cash still works, and there ought to be some kind of a backup procedure for checks (that would have been used in Sandy and Katrina).
5 Medic alert? If by this you mean things like the orange tags they put on peoples electrical boxes when life saving electrical equipment is in use (first to be repaired if power failure, last to disconnect), then I would expect the national guard (this whole things sounds like disaster area), would be either centrally locating them or moving them to the main island until such time as it is safe to return.
6 Again, I don't understand? Go to the store. Buy groceries for the elderly that can't get out themselves. If this is declared a disaster area, this affects the mail, tax timetables, billing, etc.
The three major-ish islands have fire stations and fire/rescue organizations. The county seat, county government, and county emergency management center, is on an island with a population of about 5000 people. The county's emergency management director, one of two employees in this area, is in Colorado helping *them* out with their problems. There are no local TV/radio stations. There is an active, organized, practiced, and small ham radio organization.

You have a large percentage of elderly people in remote locations, who may have medical needs.

Day One: estimates of time-to-repair range from 48 hours to "many weeks", and the point of failure and likely fixes have not been identified yet. Telcom company official lets slip that a replacement cable may not exist on the planet and would have to be manufactured, which is OK, as the necessary equipment to do the repair either has to be fabricated, or brought in from Sweden, if indeed that equipment can be found...

Begin....

Your county reps are responsible in part, for notifying the state reps, so a disaster area can be declared and the governor can use the national guard and/or call for a federal response.
If they were truly self sufficient, they wouldn't be owing money, etc. to those who aren't on the island, so that would eliminate a lot of the financial worries, troubles.

[flowerseverywhere]

I see that the problem has been fixed, and perhaps you could update us as to what happened that needs to be fixed in the future. Personal responsibility to carry them through any emergency situation is no doubt what helped many people through the crisis. Some of the other needs, like emergency medical care must have been taken care of to the best of the ability of the locals who had boats, ham radios etc. But the larger picture is what needs to be addressed. Having been through crippling hurricanes and ice storms in two very different locations you really find out quickly who and what is not prepared and a problem. So identifying how to keep communications going if this cable fails or is cut in some way seems to be the issue. It seems like some of the problems, like the prescriptions or no ATM service is part of putting all of your eggs in one basket to rely on a cable that can fail. Small alternatives to these types of problems obviously need to be put into place as well as the larger solution. Is there an alternative that you can propose to the local officials or community groups in the future?

[creaker]

I see that the problem has been fixed, and perhaps you could update us as to what happened that needs to be fixed in the future. Personal responsibility to carry them through any emergency situation is no doubt what helped many people through the crisis. Some of the other needs, like emergency medical care must have been taken care of to the best of the ability of the locals who had boats, ham radios etc. But the larger picture is what needs to be addressed. Having been through crippling hurricanes and ice storms in two very different locations you really find out quickly who and what is not prepared and a problem. So identifying how to keep communications going if this cable fails or is cut in some way seems to be the issue. It seems like some of the problems, like the prescriptions or no ATM service is part of putting all of your eggs in one basket to rely on a cable that can fail. Small alternatives to these types of problems obviously need to be put into place as well as the larger solution. Is there an alternative that you can propose to the local officials or community groups in the future?

If the cable is actually owned by the telcom, I would also plan for the possibility that at some point they may decide this is no longer economically viable for them and they won't be fixing it if it goes down again.